Craze 24

Rhiannon Jones talks to Craze 24

After achieving 24 knockouts, Craze 24 turned his back on boxing in order to pursue his music career. And it’s clear he brings the same dedication to the music arena as he once brought to the ring. He is firmly taking on the heavyweights of the US rap world, declaring in his ‘tongue in cheek’ anthem that, ‘You don’t have to be American’. But if you don’t have to be American to succeed, what is it that you do need?

‘It’s important to be consistent, make sure you stay around that you don’t disappear. I think it’s important to be assertive in business make sure you push to succeed and you don’t slack. And I think you need to be able to take criticism because you never develop, you don’t grow if you don’t take in the criticism.’

It’s clear that Craze 24 always had a lot of energy. His rap name came from his fiery nature,

‘As a younger growing up, I kind of had a quick temper so I was labelled ‘Crazy Yout’, because I was easy to wind up, you know when you got someone you can call names and they will go mad.’

But Craze 24 channelled this raw energy into boxing and music. He dropped the ‘y’ and kept the Craze adding his 24 knockouts in the ring to his name. I wondered why he decided to turn away from boxing.

‘I don’t know, sometimes I ask myself that when I’m watching the Olympics! To be honest I’ve always had a passion for music, I had a passion for boxing as well but music just took over.’

Like other UK rappers trying to make it in Hip Hop, Craze 24 has founded his own record label GX, I wonder how integral this is to his success.

‘I think you have to have your own foundation, because where we are in the UK it’s very hard. So you need to have your own foundation where you push from, a team of people around you who can criticise your music, who can help you go forward, who can motivate you and help you to persevere.’

It’s seems important to Craze 24, from songs like ‘My Precious’, that his music has a positive message. I put to him whether music has the power to influence the behaviour of young people.

‘Definitely 100%, your music influences people in general. Like when you’re in different moods it can lift you up, it can make you down, it can make you feel angry, it taps into our emotions a lot. I think it’s very influential, so I think it’s important that we know what we’re saying, when we’re putting out our music and we’re not corrupting our younger generation.’

Like other UK rappers Craze 24 must grapple with the dominance of American Hip Hop. He has chosen to face this head on in his song ‘You don’t have to be American’ it’s clear he’s trying to separate UK and US Hip Hop, I wonder why he thinks this is important?

‘I think a lot of UK rappers, because we’ve grown up watching America, we didn’t really have that hip hop scene over here we’ve kind of grown up thinking that you have to copy them in order to be successful. And we kind of lost our own identity and what’s going on over here. The tune is basically saying not just music, whether it’s sports, whether it’s business you don’t have to be American to be successful in life. It’s like we watch a lot of American programs everything we see shows American success and we don’t really see much of our success.’

Having said this when asked who his dream collaboration would be Craze picks the American kings of the Hip Hop game Jay Z and Kanye, but then qualifies this:

‘I could go through a list of American artists but anyone who is really positive; I like to rap so as long as they’re good I would do a collaboration with anyone.’

It’s clear that America is still dominant in Hip Hop and I wonder what Britain might bring that is different; given the stereotypical view of our sense of humour, and reserved natures in contrast to American swagger.

‘I think as an artist you should be just true to yourself and bring out your swagger and bring out your character your sense of humour and whether people think it’s a bit like America or not just be true to yourself. When I say ‘You don’t have to be American’, I’m not saying that you have to be overly British, or you have to rap with the Queen’s English, we’ve all got our own slang and swagger.’

Craze 24 is definitely waving the flag for UK Hip Hop, but he’s doing it his own way. If Round 1 belonged to the US Hip Hop stars, I hope that Round 2 will see UK Hip Hop artists like Craze 24 come into their own.